A Stuttering Start to the New Year!

2011 didn't start quite as we imagined it would!!

Mark's sister Amy had a detour on her journey back to the UK on January 1st ... her first flight was delayed so much ... that the second one had already left Atlanta before the first one had landed!! Thankfully there was an alternative flight the same day with some space ... going to Heathrow rather than Gatwick ... so she got back only a few hours later than planned even if it was to the other side of London!!

Abigail's bottom molars made their entrance into the world in the week after Christmas ... and she was miserable and a bit cranky for about 3 weeks in total ... including not sleeping well during the day or going to bed easily at night ... something we've NEVER had a problem with before (I know we've been very lucky as lots of you don't have such good sleepers ... thankfully we're back on track again!!) She had her moments of happiness though in amongst the crankiness ... below the cheeky girl was 'reading' Jane Austen's 'Persuasion' ... it's never too early to start on the classics!!

Mark went into the hangar on Monday 3rd January having enjoyed a week off between Christmas and New Year ... and only made it into work for one day! He came home that night concerned that his back which had had him out of action in August was not feeling right ... and when he got up on the Tuesday morning was even more worried!! Being Mark, he was determined to go into work ... so got up and left home as usual, only to return half an hour later admitting that once he got to the hangar he couldn't actually get out of the car ... oops! He then spent the next week and a half shuffling around, lying down or at the chiropractors and not much more, with a herniated disc. Thankfully it only had him out of action for half the time it did five months ago ... but unfortunately for Jenny it coincided with Abigail's 'bleurgh' patch too!

Jenny and Abigail took time to enjoy some of the continuing snow this month ... Abigail was really pleased with her new snow trousers (a christmas pressie from Auntie Jojo and Uncle Matt in Canada!!) ... and is always quick to get all her layers on when there's a chance of going out in the fluffy white stuff ... whether feeling miserable or not!

Since the last blog entry some of you have commented to us that 'snow angels' were something new to you ... so we thought we'd add some more silly photos of those ... in the first you can see Abigail is slowly working her way across the garden, one snow angel at a time (or as we heard last week ... creating a 'choir' of snow angels!!!) ... and in the second ... the beached whale, who's coat won't do up, joining her in the fun!!

Although Mark was stiff and sore ... we did convince him to join us for some fun in the snow the day before he went back into the hangar ... although a lot of the time he was just laid out in the snow!! ... Spot the cheeky face of Abigail ...

That photo was taken just after she'd attacked her Daddy and covered him in snow (below!) ... and she was obviously feeling very pleased with herself and taking full advantage of the fact that he wasn't fully mobile at the time!!

While most people round here are counting the days til spring ... you can see we're loving every minute of the snow and trying to make the most of enjoying it all! If we can't go out and play in it ... we stay inside and make tents, build assault courses around the living room ... and of course get painting (still a favourite pastime)!!!

Once Mark and Abigail were back to normal ... Jenny had a few days of feeling really rough ... just some lovely pregnancy yuckiness and probably exhaustion from the craziness of looking after the other two ... thankfully it only lasted a couple of days and we're pleased to say this last week all three of us have had a much more routine time!!!

On the home front things haven't all been rosy either ... Jenny's Nan, who Abigail has renamed 'Grammy' unfortunately had a bad fall at the beginning of the year too and has been recovering in hospital ... it's at times like this that we would like to be at home to visit her in person ... although she looks happy in the photo below she was in a lot of pain at the time and has been given at least a 12 week recovery time!

As things haven't been wonderful we've been looking at the smaller things in life to perk us up over the last couple of weeks! Mark's tried to use some of his time out of the hangar to catch up with his studies having been a bit behind a couple of months ago. He has now caught up and with 14 weeks to go until Bubble is due, he has 14 tests left ... so instead of taking one every ten days from now on, is aiming to take one each week and be done with them in time for the sleepless nights!!!

Other New Year amusements in our household have been the fact that the American's have finally woken up and started selling 'new' Crunchy Nut Cornflakes ... Jenny's favourite cereal for years back at home ... each packet comes with a money off coupon if you buy more ... which we're definitely taking advantage of!! As you can see there is one very happy Mummy and one little girl who think's her mum might be slowly loosing it!!

Something that really tickled us just this morning at the supermarket was a brand of bread we'd never noticed before ... so much so that even though we didn't need any bread we bought a loaf just so we could take a photo of it!!!!!!!! Whoever thought this would be a good name to call their brand of bread certainly hasn't lived in the UK ... even if they're trying to convince the world to 'Say Beembo' (see top right of the photo below!!!!)

As you can see we're taking the rough with the smooth ... and are glad for the time being that everything has evened out again!

The rest of December!

December 1st brought the start of the proper snow to Coshocton ... we wasted no time in getting out there and Abigail was in her element again from the get-go!! We had snow for most of the month and temperatures were always below zero (often double figures!!) ... until the last few days of the month when suddenly it turned almost springlike, no coat weather!! (That was only for a few days though!)

Last year we'd tried to teach Abigail how to do snow angels ... but she just wasn't old enough to get it ... this year she just drops backwards without a care in the world and covers the yard with snow angels ... and tries to get us to join her doing them too! The photo below shows her first ever snow angel ... little did we know at that point there would be a million more to follow!

Abigail has been having fun getting to know the new Abigail and her little brother Matthew Swanson from the UK (who we mentioned moved to Coshocton in November). While their parents were having some of their MMS orientation in the hangar, Jenny and her good friend Laurie had fun baking and decorating cookies with the little ones!!

Mark's sister, Amy arrived safely on December 19th ... having been very lucky to catch a plane out of the UK in a small window of opportunity that the heavy snow allowed. After allowing her just a day to acclimatise ... she was on the floor, playing and being silly with Abigail for the rest of her stay ... obviously we had to capture it on camera too!!

You've already seen the Christmassy fun we had together in a recent blog entry ... but we got up to our usual outings that we do with visitors too ... Amish Country, a day shopping somewhere (this time Canton), Roscoe village ... and of course a visit to the hangar!

It was the first time Jenny & Abigail had seen the Cessna 206 which had recently been modified and put onto floats ... Abigail is already turning into a bit of a plane geek and loves to go up and see them all ... especially that 'BIG' one!!

Abigail has enjoyed all the new things that arrived in the house over the Christmas holidays ... but one of her favourites was her easel and paints from Nana Kukhu ... these pictures were taken the first time she got arty ... and produced about a dozen masterpieces without stopping!! It's a regular pastime now ... we have so many pictures around the house that we don't know what to do with them all!!

2011 hasn't started quite as we planned ... but more of that another time!!

Cessna 402 Project

WARNING

This blog may contain technical information

which may cause swelling of the brain-box.

After my last blog about some of the work the I had been performing in the hanger I had a few comments about how technical and brain numbing (but amazing) it all was. So I'd thought I'd get in there first to let you know that this was going to be a bit more on the "em yeah well okay ... if you say so" side of the work here.

Since May 2010 there has been various people working on a twin engined Cessna 402B from Wings With "The Word" mission up in Maine. Cessna produced an inspection that all 402's have to go through. The inspection is on the wings forward spars. All the bolts holes have to be inspected for cracks (using Electromagnetic tests). If we had found cracks, it could well have been the end of the aircraft because of the cost to open up the wings and replace the wing spar or get a replacement wing. Thankfully for the mission, the wings passed with flying colours, which meant that we had to perform the second part of the modification.

If your aircraft passed the test, an external spar cap (a very long thick piece of aluminium) had to attached to the outside underneath using some very special fasteners. But before any of the work could start, the drawings supplied by Cessna had to be interpreted, and this is where all my previous knowledge came to the forefront. After working in a design office for more than ten years, I was able to help decipher their drawings, parts lists and modification documents.

Helping to decipher the drawings.

Now we could start. We had to clean out the whole area, remove hundreds of fasteners, strip paint, and then drill about 300 holes (each side) into the new spar cap so that it could be installed. This also meant removing the firewall (large sheet of stainless steel that sits behind an engine that should stop a fire from getting through to the structure so that you can land and not crash), and numerous skins so that we could get to the holes.

Spar Cap being drilled in place!

Because of the special fasteners that have to be installed, every hole in the spar cap had to be drilled about 3 times and them reamed (this ensures that the hole is to a specific diameter so that there is an interference fit between the fastener and the structure). So drilling hundreds of very accurate holes took a very long time. But they were finally all installed.

Fasteners going in. Spar Cap Completed.

Now that we have completed the installation of the Spar Cap, we need to reinstall all the parts that we took off. But it also hasn't been that easy, as when we removed parts we kept on finding corrosion, cracks or just bad holes in many parts. This meant that we had to manufacture new parts from sheet aluminium, stainless steel etc which reduced costs for the mission. Some parts we just couldn't manufacture, so had to research the web for the parts at the cheapest cost.

New Skins and panels fabricated.

As well as new structure to be fabricated, we found a lot of damage on the wiring looms that entered the engine compartment. So they had to be pulled out of the wing, removed, new ones fabricated and routed back into the wing again.

Wires hanging from the wing. Major Damage due to arching.

The other part to be done was the replacement of the firewall. All of the brackets had to fabricated from stainless steel and all the fasteners had to be monel (a type of metal) as they are corrosion resistant and have a very high melting point.

Firewall removed. Looking at Fwd Wing Spar.

Firewall going in. Firewall installed.

At the moment the spar caps and firewalls are installed and complete. The left wing has had much more work done on it (a whole new canted bulkhead had to be installed, the green/yellow structure in the photo above) but most of the forward skins have been installed. We still have to work on the aft skins, as well as additional modifications from Cessna that are in that area; including a new auxiliary wing spar, stainless steel fuel lines behind the firewalls and new access doors in the forward skins to better inspect the exhaust system.

Then it's reinstalling the main undercarriage, installing the engines and putting everything back where is came from. I will finish this blog about the 402 once the work has finally been complete. Just to prove that I have been working hard, below are a few photos of me working on various parts of the job.

If you follow the link below, this will take you to MMS Aviation's blog that shows a short video of me removing the firewalls. It is the first of seven movie clips that have been taken of this project.

http://mmsaviation.blogspot.com/2010/05/cessna-402-spar-cap-project.html